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North Carolina Election Board Finds Evidence Of Significant Fraud To Help GOP Candidate

www.huffpost.com

The executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections revealed Monday that state officials had uncovered a “coordinated” and “unlawful” effort to collect absentee ballots on behalf of a Republican congressional candidate in the November election.

Kim Strach, the board’s executive director, made the comments at a closely watched public evidentiary hearing in Raleigh on Monday following a monthslong investigation into election irregularities in the state’s 9th Congressional District. The state board declined to certify the race last November and could order a new election after the hearing. Republican Mark Harris currently leads Democrat Dan McCready by 905 votes in the race.

In the first public comments outlining the results of the state’s probe, Strach said investigators had evidence that McCrae Dowless, a political operative working on behalf of the Harris campaign, filled out and mailed in incomplete or blank ballots from both his office and home. She said Dowless paid people in cash to collect requests for absentee ballots and the ballots themselves. The state board also has evidence, she said, that Dowless paid people to falsify signatures on absentee ballots indicating that they had witnessed those ballots being filled out (North Carolina requires two witnesses to someone filling out an absentee ballot).

It is not illegal to help someone request an absentee ballot in North Carolina, but it is illegal for anyone other than a close relative to take custody of the actual ballot.

Strach said Dowless took several steps to conceal the fraud. Those measures included using the same color ink as the voter who filled out other parts of the ballot, mailing the ballot from a post office close to the voter and placing the stamps on the envelopes in a certain way not to raise red flags.